My next bout of consciousness was announced by sunlight battering up against my eyelids. It was warm and red. A breeze was still wafting but it wasn’t chill. I opened my eyes and saw clearly the room I was in for the first time. It was quite large, with a cream-colored bureau against one wall and a solid oak desk next to an open sliding glass door. The bed I was in was king-size, and the chair next to it was ivory, not white. Dark blue carpeting covered the floor, and the ceiling was high and light blue enough to almost be a sky.
Inhaling, I picked up the sour smell coming from under the covers. The fresh morning breeze was the perfect counterpoint to the odor rising from my recently deceased and then partially resurrected body.
I lay still for a while, thinking about Lynne Hua and Mouse. Had they been there or were they phantoms my mind used while paving its way back to consciousness? I didn’t remember much about the accident that Lynne had spoken of. I couldn’t imagine little Raymond carrying my hundred and eighty-some pounds up a seaside cliff.
And when a man ran off the side of a mountain in a three-ton car he died. Didn’t he?
These thoughts made the circuit of my mind six or seven times before I realized that I would never come up with the answer on my own. I decided then that I’d have to see what was outside of the well-appointed, unfamiliar blue bedroom.
I raised up on one elbow and fell back with a thump. The pain going through my head felt like a jagged lightning bolt come out of nowhere on a perfectly clear afternoon. That was okay. I’d had hangovers before that made rising a two-effort affair. I tried again, but this time I didn’t make it as far up as on the first attempt. My next effort was more a thought than any kind of physical motion.
Finally I decided to roll to the edge of the bed and swing my legs over the side one at a time. The tug of gravity helped to pull my torso into a mostly upright position. The billowing curtains from the glass sliding doors seemed to be cheering me on.
The last thing I remembered I was a mature man with the sap still running, driving a car in the night. Now I was middle-aged and achy, dizzy too. It was a foregone conclusion that I would never be young again.
I took six deep breaths, tried to rise to my feet, failed, took another deep inhalation and succeeded. I was a bit wobbly but made it to the door without falling. It felt like victory just standing there holding on to the brass doorknob.
I don’t know how long I lingered at the doorway, but at one point I leaned against the knob and rode the door out into the vestibule at the top of a white wood and blue carpeted stairway. The walls were white and hung with oil paintings of still lifes and of poor and rural black men and women. It struck me that I had rarely seen such intimate renditions of poor black folk. I wondered again where I was. Maybe I had died and gone to a kind of colored heaven, a big house on the edge of the estate where the white people went when they passed on.
There were three closed doors on that landing, but I didn’t want to waste my strength investigating them. So, grasping the banister with both hands, I took the downward-cascading stairs one at a time, trying to keep from stumbling while studying the faces of sharecroppers and day laborers, laundresses and just folks at rest—most of them looking almost as tired as I felt.
One thing that kept me upright was a sharp pain in my right ankle. Every time that foot hit the floor, the shooting sensation would travel almost to the knee. Rather than resent this ache, I welcomed it, because with each second step I was shocked back to clarity. It was like a bright red spot on a fading gray plain, a distant sun—a jabbing reminder that my blood was still pumping, that life, if not a certainty, was at least a possibility.
I passed three floors and more than a dozen paintings before the staircase ended. On the first floor of the enormous house I felt a little lost. There were hallways with quite a few doors, a living room off to the right that had broad windows and was three steps lower than the floor on which I stood. There were no sounds, no indication of other human beings inhabiting this unlikely architecture.
I was wearing light blue pajamas. These too were unfamiliar to me. My dark brown hands reaching out from the pale sleeves seemed like they didn’t belong in my clothes or that home. I stood there drifting through these aimless thoughts, waiting for a sign.
I didn’t have the strength to go exploring. It felt as if I had a certain but undisclosed number of steps and breaths left in me. I had to husband these resources so as not to give out before reaching my goal—whatever that was.
A muted laugh came from somewhere. I looked around, but the white walls and pine flooring, the many doors and the awkward array of sunlight and shadows remained still and lifeless.
A louder laugh was emitted, and a direction suggested itself.
To my left, on the right half of a broad wall, was an overwide pink door. It was from behind this portal, I was almost sure, that the laughter had come. I released the banister and staggered to a piece of wall next to the pink door. Leaning my head against the white plasterboard I heard speech that was muffled by the barrier. Then there was another high-pitched laugh—a female exhortation of near hilarity.
I hesitated.
This wasn’t my house. This wasn’t the home of any Negro I had ever known. It was familiar, but no more so than my body, which seemed to have aged a generation from the last time I knew myself.
After a moment of cracked logic I decided that I should go through the door and ask the white people on the other side why I was there in their house wearing somebody else’s pajamas and staggering around like Max Schmeling after his first-round decimation by Joe Louis.
My decision made, I reached for the doorknob but realized that there was none. This simple detail flummoxed me. How could I get through a door if there was no way to open it? I stood there for well over a minute trying to think my way around the problem. I went over it again and again. Early on I thought that maybe I could just push against the pink panel, but for some reason I rejected this simple solution. I considered knocking, looking for another door around the corner, calling out for someone to come let me in, and simply giving up and sitting on the floor until somebody came out and found me. Only after deep consideration of each of these approaches did I finally decide to push the door.
It swung open as easily as the curtains blew inward in the upstairs bedroom.
Laughter and friendly talk were issuing from inside.